“The amateur question": uma história global do amadorismo esportivo nas primeiras décadas do século XX

Abstract

This dissertation aims to investigate the circulation of ideas and the reframing of the concept of sporting amateurism by Brazilian sportsmen in the first decades of the 20th century. This concept, born in Victorian England and promoted by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), was central to sporting practices until the mid-20th century and underwent intense disputes both in international sports agencies and in the various countries where sport was present. Thus, analysing the cultural transit between Brazilian and foreign sportsmen from a global perspective allows us to understand how, in Brazil, the concept of sporting amateurism was used to serve as yet another instrument of exclusion for the national elites. To do this, we use documentation from the International Olympic Committee; Avery Brundage, former president of the IOC; national newspapers; and the statutes of sports associations. The conclusion is that Brazilian sportsmen had contact with different views of amateur sport and that amateur sport here had the contours of racial exclusion, even if this was not explicit in the letter of the law of the sports associations.